"Practicing Refusal" through Architectural Representation

GSAPP Conversations

Mario Gooden in Conversation with Zoe Kauder Nalebuff. In this podcast episode, CCCP student Zoe Kauder Nalebuff speaks with faculty Mario Gooden (‘90 MARCH) about his recent performance Working on Water in collaboration with Jonathan Gonzalez and Thuto Durkac Somo ('19 CCCP). During the conversation, Mario Gooden shares insights around the performance that archive movements and images of black subjectivity. Enacting feminist theorist Tina Campt’s concept of “practicing refusal,” the performance insists on radical witnessing and forms of architectural representation that “refuse authoritative forms of visuality which function to refuse blackness itself.” By acting and moving across various sites, the multimedia piece draws attention to the work occurring outside of the audience’s focus throughout the performance. Mario Gooden (‘90 M.Arch) is faculty and Co-Director of the Global Africa Lab at Columbia GSAPP and Principal at Huff + Gooden Architects. His practice engages the cultural landscape and the intersectionality of architecture, race, gender, sexuality, and technology.